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Can a groundswell of popular support for network neutrality save free speech online? Radio show “Media Minutes” asks whether the SavetheInternet coalition has the momentum to turn public opinion against AT&T and their coin-operated front men in Washington.

Listen to the show.

Gun Owners of America’s Craig Fields puts it best:

“In a very, very strange situation, what we have is the necessity of government intervention to ensure a free marketplace of ideas. Whenever you see people from the far left and the far right joining together about something that Congress is getting ready to do, it’s been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is basically un-American.”

Columbia Professor Timothy Wu gives an historical perspective by comparing AT&T’s net control scheme to the AP’s 19th century news monopoly, calling it “a threat not only to American business and competition but a threat to American democracy.”

The loss of network neutrality will smother the innovative nature of the Internet, which has made it such a powerful economic and social engine. Warns Professor Wu:

“It’s no longer survival of the fittest. It’s no longer who has the best technology. It’s a question of who goes golfing with the CEO of AT&T. And I think that’s not the American way.”

Indeed, which helps explain the left-right cyberstorm over this issue. Listen in.

Right Wing Nut House is blogging about net neutrality, as are dedicated conservatives Kitty Litter, the Absurd Report, and Freedom Watch. And SavetheInternet was the Web Site of the Day on Right Wing News.

I’ve been adding supporting blogs to our blogroll furiously, as you can see on the right. Filmmaker magazine, DeafDC, the Asian-Pacific Islander Blog Network and Business Analysis Insight are some of the new sites on there. And we’re up to 1300 friends on MySpace.

Meanwhile, Robert Bennett calls our network neutrality amendment ‘fascist’ and lauds sell-out Charlie Gonzales for ‘fighting fascism’. I’m confused. I thought we were left-wing communists.

Tim Wu sent this email in response to libertarian concerns on this issue.

I believe that thinking libertarians fear two types of centralized power: that exercised by government, and that exercised by government-supported monopolistic incumbents, like AT&T.

The Network Neutrality debate is really a debate about what are, in effect, crown corporations, AT&T and Verizon, whose plans would distort private competition among internet service providers.  Companies like AT&T are infrastructure providers, almost like the roads — and their plans are very much simple tollbooths placed on a utility necessary for the operation of the private market.  That’s why I think even libertarians have reason to resist the incursions of a company like AT&T on the internet and its design.